WASHINGTON — When President Obama began making the case for a deal with Iran that would delay its ability to assemble an atomic weapon, his first argument was that a nuclear-armed Iran would set off a “free-for-all” of proliferation in the Arab world.
“It is almost certain that other players in the region would feel it necessary to get their own nuclear weapons,’’ he said in 2012.
Now, as he gathered Arab leaders over dinner at the White House on Wednesday and prepared to meet with them at Camp David on Thursday, he faced a perverse consequence: Saudi Arabia and many of the smaller Arab states are vowing to match whatever nuclear enrichment capability Iran is permitted to retain.
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“We can’t sit back and be nowhere as Iran is allowed to retain much of its capability,” one of the Arab leaders preparing to meet Obama said Monday, declining to be named until he made his case to the president.
Prince Turki bin Faisal, 70, a former Saudi intelligence chief, has been touring the world with the same message.
“Whatever the Iranians have, we will have, too,” he said at a recent conference in Seoul.
For a president who came to office vowing to move toward the elimination of nuclear weapons, the Iran deal presents a dilemma. If the agreement is sealed next month — far from guaranteed — Obama could claim to have bought another decade, maybe longer, before Iran can credibly threaten to have a nuclear weapon.
But by leaving 5,000 centrifuges and a growing research and development program in place, Obama is essentially recognizing Iran’s right to continue enrichment of uranium, one of the two pathways to a nuclear weapon. Leaders of the Sunni Arab states contend that if Iran goes down that road, Washington cannot credibly argue they should not follow, even if their technological abilities are years behind Iran’s.
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“With or without a deal, there will be pressure for nuclear proliferation in the Middle East,” said Gary Samore, Obama’s top nuclear adviser during the first term and now the executive director for research of the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard University. “The question is one of capabilities. How would the Saudis do this without help from the outside?”
The Arab states might find it is not as easy as it sounds. The members of the Nuclear Suppliers Group, a loose affiliation of nations that make the crucial components for nuclear energy and weapons projects, have a long list of components they will not ship to the Middle East. For the Saudis, and other Arab states, that leaves only North Korea and Pakistan, two countries that appear to have mastered nuclear enrichment, as possible sources.
It is doubtful that any of the US allies being hosted by Obama this week would turn to North Korea, although it supplied Syria with the components of a nuclear reactor that Israel destroyed in 2007.
Pakistan is another story. The Saudis have a natural if unacknowledged claim on the technology: They paid for much of the work by A.Q. Khan, a Pakistani nuclear scientist who ended up peddling his wares abroad. It is presumed that Pakistan would provide Saudi Arabia with the technology.
The Arab leader interviewed on Monday said that countries in the Gulf Cooperation Council, all to be represented at Camp David, had discussed a collective program of their own — couched, as Iran’s is, as a peaceful effort to develop nuclear energy. The United Arab Emirates signed a deal with the United States to build nuclear plants, but it is prohibited from enriching its own uranium.
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Over the past decade, the Saudi government has financed nuclear research projects but there is no evidence they have tried to build or buy facilities of the kind Iran has assembled to master the fuel cycle, the independent production of the makings of a weapon.
Obama met on Wednesday with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Nayef and Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman — who will most likely moderate their criticisms while talking to the president. Obama is expected to offer Saudi Arabia and the other Arab states some security assurances, although the president will have a difficult time overcoming the deep suspicions that the Saudis, and other Arab leaders, harbor about the Iran deal.